HBO Lets ‘Sunshine Boy’ Pour In

No stranger for grabbing docu films to fill their cable television slate, Icelandcinemanow.com reports that HBO have grabbed Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s documentary The Sunshine Boy for an eventual April 2nd release expanding into major cities.

Having made its world preem at TIFF last September and receiving some good buzz, the doc film narrated by Kate Winslet and celandic singer Björk and the Icelandic band Sigur Ros offered their support in terms of score for a first-person account by producer Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir and her passionate quest to understand her severely autistic son Keli. With a poet’s delicate touch Fridriksson explores the entire spectrum of autism, while not losing sight of Margret’s mission as she meets with the world’s leading experts on the disease. They end up in Austin, Texas, where Margret and her husband are astounded to see Keli’s mind unlocked by therapist Soma Mukhophadhyay.

If HBO found value in this docu-subject its because autism appears to be a no longer silent epidemic. I don’t know what the numbers are, but I can easily point to the incline of public awareness via the media on the rise of diagnosed new cases. I strongly suggest you check out the trailer below which unfortunately includes Temple Grandin, a person living with autism and who happens to be the poster person for safe animal slaughter and who ironically, was awarded by an organization (PETA) whose supposed main goal is the protection of animals.